The paintings of Rubens were the original inspiration for this invention. Since 1640, his paints have remained flexible and uncracked. An analysis of modern paintings, with their tendencies to degrade and crack after as little as five years, demonstrates a disgraceful contrast between modern paints and much medieval painting. The potential for degradation of all modern oil paintings, toward early oblivion, should have long since spurred changes in paint formulation. Experimental exposures, used with all commercial paints, clearly establishes this confusion. Unbelievable contrasts in resistance to change, have been completely ignored by modern paint technicians, who believe they specialize in art materials, but ignore technology and reality.
After years of painting and research, it became apparent that the most-durable and usable oil paints could be made from most-highly-polymerized oil. Oil mediums and permanent varnishes should also contain sufficient lead soaps to maintain flexibilities, but not enough to cause oversoftening.
Normally-sized, reactive-pigments are not necessary if sufficient reactivities can be attained without pigment grains. Because of effective quantities of reactive-soaps in all mediums, areas on paintings which contain no reactive-pigments, would have sufficient and possibly ideal reactivities. Because of this, there would be no weakened and unreactive areas of paint which would be conducive to cracking.
From all the research that was available, oil gels were so highly polymerized that it was impossible to use them. Gels were resistant to solvents at normal temperatures; would they be resistant to heated solvents? Would a hot and liquid gel be resistant to strong solvents? It was finally determined that gels were hot liquids before they cooled and thickened, to become gels; they could then be made into solutions if they were mixed with strong solvents while they were still liquid, before they gelled. After the solvent eventually evaporated, the gel would assume its highly resistant qualities of being resistant to solvents, acids and alkalis.
The paints and mediums of this invention are based upon making oil gels and then making them go into solution before they would cool enough to become resistant to solvents.
After many attempts, ways to use gels in paints and mediums were finally established. Many types of highly-polymerized paints and oil gels were made and their resistance to changes were tested by exterior exposures. Oil gels were determined to be the most-resistant of all oil paints.
These paints are unaffected by solvents, strong acids and strong alkalis. When durability is important, gel-based varnish should supplant all permanent natural varnishes, used in art and for many used commercially. Many commercial varnishes are far less resistant than gel-oil varnishes with effective additives. A gel-oil varnish with sufficient lead soaps for the maintenance of flexibility, is sufficiently hard to resist the environments of paintings, without hardening oxidative driers. For many commercial applications, many combinations of driers could be used.
The resistant gel paint would not only resist oxidation, but with a sufficient volume of lead soaps, would repel oxidation if it should occur in the future. Much research shows that lead soaps have these regenerative qualities. Lead soaps do not oxidize, so they maintain their reactive qualities indefinitely. Not only would paints similar to those of Rubens be possible, but the benefits of very resistant commercial paints would be of high value. Hardness or softness of gels can be controlled with conventional additives, baking or processing.
Gelled oil molecules were made to be so large and impenetrable, that they would prove to be most-resistant to change. They would resist oxidation, rather than require oxygen for solidification. The most-unalterable oil molecules would be the basis for these paints, which, along with sufficient lead soaps, would be resistant to water, as a cause for embrittlement.
Because a gel becomes a solid, painting with a gel in solution becomes much like painting with varnish as a medium. When the solvents evaporate, the pigment and gel combination could be made to solidify rapidly, so that almost-immediate and thin overpainting could be used. Varying the rates of evaporation, could speed or slow the solidification of paint layers. Paintings which might require months to paint with oxidizing oil could be painted with dispatch, within a few days. The drying of commercial paints can be altered by the addition of differing volatiles.